Children in Ballet: Strung Up, Strung Out

The following article is excerpted from the wonderful

book, "Games Children Play" (Hawthorne Press). It is pro-

vided here by the kind permission of its author, Kim John

Payne, whose website - http://www.thechildtoday.com - is a

resource for parents and teachers.

Along with opera, ballet is one of our classic artistic

forms. Why is this? And why is it that so many children

undergo a classical ballet train-

ing?

Ballet is a highly stylised,

perhaps the most stylised, of all

movement forms. While an

ordinary human being can

kick, strike or bounce a ball,

punch or wrestle, perhaps even

do a roll or turn a cartwheel,

there are very, very few who

can move like a classical

dancer. This is not surprising

since it is exactly the point,

the aim of ballet. The movements are designed to appear

not only graceful but ‘other-worldly’, to lift the audience

up and away from earthly existence; another, connected

feature of ballet is that it is almost totally audience-centred.

Of course the dancers experience feelings - particularly

pain! - but they must not communicate this to the onlooker.

They must appear as if the earth with all its cares and limi-

tations does not exist. Gravity is overcome and denied. The

dancer seems to draw us away into another dimension.

This denial of gravity shows itself in many ways. The

most obvious is the tutu, and the costuming in general. The

tutu extends out from the waist and forms a frilly band

around the dancer. It draws a clear distinction between the

body that shows above the waist, which is often gaudily

and attractively dressed, and the lower body which is as far

as possible plainly adorned in tights. The tutu emphasises

the dancer’s upper body, and also prevents her from seeing

her own legs and feet.

The whole posture of the dancer is developed and sus-

tained by training the muscles, particularly of the abdomen

and the legs. The dancers spend painful, feet-distorting

hours, learning the en pointe technique, in which the

knuckles of the toes are forced to carry the entire body

weight. This increases the illusion of weightlessness, as

only a tiny surface area is in touch with the floor, reinforc-

ing the impression of a negative attitude towards the earth -

the least possible physical contact with it the better. The

feet move in tiny steps that seem to float the upper body

across the floor; or the dancers are thrown and leap high

into the air, seeming to hover there like a bird. The gaze is

directed up and away. The arm movements generally begin

at the waist and move upwards, seldom dropping below the

tutu. A stylistic copy of the way a child moves with ease

and levity is sought and parodied.

So ballet audiences, particularly since the industrial rev-

olution, were encouraged to leave the world behind, with

all its increasing materialism and mechanisation, and be

transported to higher, more graceful realms. Not to appreci-

ate this artform was considered to be the mark of a

Philistine, someone who was cut off from the more noble

aspects of cultural life.

In fact, a child’s movement and inner intent, particularly

at play, could not be more different from the ballet dancer.

Whereas the dancer undergoes hours of training to achieve

a technique-based levity, the child moves with an efferves-

cence and buoyancy that is as beautiful as it is uncon-

scious. The classical dancer’s movements are highly

stylised, the child’s are totally natural. The dancer draws a

sharp divide between inner experience and what can be

externally observed, while the child knows no such divide;

the way the child moves is strongly motivated by the way

he feels. Whereas the dancer deals in abstraction, the child

is immersed in reality. The dancer’s moves are carefully

directed, the child’s are spontaneous. The dancer moves for

the appreciation of an audience, the child plays because it

is a natural expression of life. The dancer’s aim is to rise

above an earthly existence, the child’s energies are com-

pletely opposite - he wants to learn about the world and

become a part of it.

The following is from "The Art of Dance" by Isadora

Duncan.

"The school of ballet of today, vainly striving against the

natural laws of gravitation or the natural will of the indi-

ballet.pdf • revised 12/20/2011 continued on next page

© c

opyright

2008 K

im J

ohn P

ayne

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movementforchildhood.com Children in Ballet

vidual, and working in discord in its form and movement

with the form and movement of nature, produces a sterile

movement which gives no birth to future movements, but

dies as it is made.

The expression of the modern school of ballet, wherein

each action is an end, and no movement, pose or rhythm is

successive or can be made to evolve succeeding action, is

an expression of degeneration, of living death. All the

movements of our modern ballet school are sterile move-

ments because they are unnatural. their purpose is to

create the delusion that the law of gravitation does not

exist for them.

The primary or fundamental movements of the new

school of the dance must have within them the seeds from

which will evolve all other movements, each in turn to give

birth to others in unending sequence of still higher and

greater expression, thoughts and ideas.

To those who nevertheless still enjoy the movements for

historical or choreographic or whatever other reasons, to

those I answer: They see no farther than the skirts and

tricots. But look - under the skirts, under the tricots are

dancing deformed muscles. Look still farther - underneath

the muscles are deformed bones. A deformed skeleton is

dancing before you. This deformation through incorrect

dress and incorrect movement is the result of the training

necessary to the ballet.

The ballet condemns itself by enforcing the deformation

of the beautiful woman’s body! No historical, no choreo-

graphic reasons can prevail against that!

It is the mission of all art to express the highest and most

beautiful ideals of man. What ideal does the ballet

express?"

To encourage children to take up ballet is to impose an

adultified concept of beauty on those that have no need of

it. If the child is repeatedly exposed to this form of train-

ing, he will eventually begin to adopt the adult values of

the dancer; this is to invite emotional disturbance and to

restrict the child’s full experience of childhood.

ballet.pdf • revised 12/20/2011